Last month, it looked like the use of Windows XP in PCs took a steep dive worldwide. Research firm Net Applications indicated that, according to their numbers, the over 12 year old operating system had a market share of 27.84 percent in December, a huge drop of 3.38 percent compared to November.

Today, the firm released its market share data from January 2014 and it shows that Windows XP use actually went up to 29.30 percent, a rise of well lover 1 percent compared to December. That's not good news for Microsoft as it tries to get more XP users to upgrade to a more recent version of Windows before April 8th. That's when the company will officially cut off all patches and support for XP, although it will keep providing antivirus signatures until July 2015.

The PC market share for Windows 8.1 went up just slightly in January to 3.92 percent, compared to 3.50 percent in December, while Windows 8 barely registered a decline to 6.62 percent, compared to 6.65 percent for the previous month. Combined, the market share of Windows 8 and 8.1 worldwide is now at 10.54 percent, up from in 10.15 December. Even though Windows 8.1 is a free update for Windows 8 PC users, it would appear that not many users have chosen to make the switch yet. That may be why Microsoft is getting ready to release a small update for Windows 8.1 that will offer users better mouse and keyboard support.

Windows 7 is still the most used PC operating system in the world. Net Applications shows it commanded 47.46 percent of the market in January, compared to 49.26 percent in December.